Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
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An investigation into one of the largest and most lucrative mineral mining companies in the world, Rio Tinto, Extraction Politics reveals how the company constructs a presence in the places it operates and shapes meanings and orientations toward the environment. Taking readers on a "rhetorical pilgrimage" across the American Southwest, Nicholas ......
Purity Culture, Bodies, and Beliefs confronts the enduring effects of religious trauma by centering the body as both a site of harm and a source of healing. This collection offers a necessary space for truth telling, grief, and renewal. Bringing together critical autoethnographies and theoretical reflection, this volume examines how purity ......
A Rhetorical and Canonical Study of Individual Lament Psalms
Lament psalms are often imagined as private cries to God. Yet many laments are also directed outward-toward friends, foes, and entire communities. The Social Audience of Prayer reveals how the psalmist's words reach beyond the divine to demand recognition, solidarity, and change from a human audience as well. W. Derek Suderman offers the first ......
New Perspectives on Settlement and Cultural Identity
In the thirty-five years since the publication of Barry Kent’s seminal book, Susquehanna’s Indians, new and novel technologies, interpretive perspectives, and archaeological data have led to a reassessment of many aspects of Susquehannock life. This book presents these developments, bringing the study of the Susquehannocks into ......
Russian state propaganda has framed the invasion of Ukraine as a liberation mission by invoking the Soviet-era myth of the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), in which the Soviet people, led by Russia, saved the world from the greatest evil of the twentieth century. At the same time, the Russian government has banned civil society institutions and ......
In 1965, striking farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley sparked the beginning of the Chican@ movement. As the movement quickly gained traction across the southwestern United States, public frictions and splits emerged among activists over strategic political decisions. Jose G. Izaguirre III explores how these disagreements often hinged on the ......
The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism
Inspired by Richard Wagner's idea of the total artwork, European modernist artists began to pursue multimedia projects that mixed colors, sounds, and shapes. Polina Dimova's At the Crossroads of the Senses traces this new sensory experience of synaesthesia-the physiological or figurative blending of senses-as a modernist phenomenon from its ......
The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East
What is sacrifice? How can we identify it in the archaeological record? And what does it tell us about the societies that practice it? Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East investigates these and other questions through the evidence for human and animal sacrifice in the Near East from the Neolithic to the ......
With eight cryptic words by Jesus in John 5:17, an enigma surfaces regarding God’s activity in his ministry that is not easy for us to solve. Jesus, in defending his actions in healing the lame man at the pool of Bethzatha (Bethesda), makes a comparison that is simple enough on the surface: Jesus’ activity finds its basis in the ......
